Renegade Ops Review

If you've ever wanted a top-down Just Cause, download this.

Avalanche Studios, developer of Just Cause 1 & 2, knows something about showing gamers a goofy good time with weapons and vehicles. It brings that sensibility to Renegade Ops, a more modest but no less fun downloadable effort for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade. Want to drive through buildings, run over bad guys, and turn giant tanks into smoldering craters? Renegade Ops sends you joyriding in several heavily armored recreational vehicles. Only the cringe-inducing dialogue and voice acting stand in the way of a fantastic time.

This is a top-down dual-stick shooter where you barrel through jungle and desert environments blasting everything that stands in between you and your next objective. Levels can sprawl for quite a distance but the helpful waypoint marker makes finding your destinations easy. In Renegade Ops, problems are solved by blowing things up. Are tanks terrorizing a village? Blow up the tanks. The President is being held captive on a train? Blow up the train.

Ending enemies and completing objectives earns you experience points that level up your characters and grant vehicle upgrades. The variety of playable drivers -- each with their own skill tree and weapons -- provide a lot of welcome customization and gameplay options. Four characters also mean four gamers can play cooperatively online (or two can play locally via splitscreen).

Thanks to highly detailed and destructible environments, Renegade Ops looks fantastic. A sniper giving you trouble from atop a tower? Just drive through the tower, sending wood splinters and the sniper spilling to the ground. One particularly exhilarating sequence about halfway through the game finds you trying to outrun a nuclear explosion, but you may find yourself distracted by how pretty the inferno looks.

The particularly awful dialogue and voice acting will attempt to stymie your enjoyment of Renegade Ops. Orders barked at you by your commanding officer are the kind of needlessly macho drivel that makes you feel dumber for having heard it. Luckily, the fun gameplay withstands the aural onslaught.

The Verdict

Renegade Ops reminds us a video game doesn't need much to be fun. Give us a war machine and stuff to blow up and we'll soon be enjoying ourselves. This operation looks great and provides lots of amusing, '80s action movie thrills.